Well... w/o a catback the sound is leaving the car right under you and reverberating off the road. W/ some pipes it'll be leaving out the back of the car so it might help. I tired removing my Stingers for a day in place of the straights (but I still have cats w/ my Kooks) It sounded wicket at WOT but at any other time the resonance was so bad it have me headaches. I never tried it w/ my partition in.